Gentiana saponaria have become one of my favorite flowers in late fall. I don’t like calling them soapwort gentians, named so because their leaves resemble Saponaria. It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth just saying it and sounds like a compound the dermatologist would prescribe.
No, I so find the name harvestbells much more delightful. It is as if we are ringing in the end of the growing season as we head into Christmas time. The egg-shaped flowers of these natives remind me of the chunky holiday lights colored for advent, their cobalt blue petals with hints of purple and pink as the flower fades after being pollinated.
I’ve had one on my small nursery pad now for a few years in a container that I got via a colleague, and it has been fun watching it develop and produce 40+ flowers this fall. I’m afraid to plant my one little plant out; however, I’ve been germinating seedlings, and with a few back ups, I’m about to become more courageous and try it in the ground.
The Native Plant Society of Texas planned an outing last Sunday to see them blooming in the wild, and I jumped at the chance to go. While they occur all the way north to Wisconsin, over to coastal New York and New Jersey, and down into Florida, they are rare in Texas and only occur in two counties. Even Karen was interested in seeing them in the wild.
We arrived at Six Mile Boat Ramp on Toledo Bend Lake Sunday morning to meet up with the group and drove the short distance to the gentian site. This site is the same that we visited in January 2020. After walking down the road a bit, friend Peter Loos who helped lead the group directed us into the woods. The soil here was wet as we stepped carefully and looked down to start searching for the little blue bottles amongst the brown and silver sweet bay leaves.
“Found one,” Peter yelled.
Two harvestbells hug the ground and barely appear above the leaf litter. Can you find them?
And, then another and another as we walked through the muck. On most plants the hefty flowers hugged the ground on long stems as if tucked in for winter’s rest amongst the leaf litter. The flowers might be a good 18–24 inches away from the crown of the plant.
A good overview of Gentiana saponaria habitat in east Texas.
We first encountered isolated individuals, but then they started appearing in small groupings of three here or eleven there.
One of the most populous concentrations of Gentiana saponaria we saw. How many do you count in this photo? I see seven clusters of flowers and counted eleven plants at this site.
The larger plant in the image above seemed well placed leaning against this pine.
Rounding the corner in the stream, we found an individual that had a flared open flower where we were able to see inside, which was quite unusual. Harvestbells don’t open and close like other gentians such as Gentiana catesbaei. Instead, bees have to force the petals open to access the pollen. I noticed on it that the pistil was covered in some type of fungus, and there was a small pool of water in the bottom of the flower.
A close up of the open flower with fungus on the pistil.
I’ve long wondered about the closed flowers of gentians, thinking that it was coevolution with a pollinator. But, seeing this fungus and the water pooled in the bottom clicked with a previous observation. This fall on my plant at home, I pollinated the flowers by prying the flower petals open with my finger and swirling it around. Then, I would go to another receptive flower and swirl. And, another and another, any that looked ready to receive pollen. The next morning when I got ready to do more pollinations, I was surprised to find that the flowers I had slightly forced open the day before now had copious water in their little blue bottles. That didn’t happen last year because this year I installed automatic irrigation for watering my plants. Last year, I got good seed set, but my gut told me that water sitting in the flower wasn’t good. I turned the plant up to dump out what I could and relocated it where I could hand water it.
But, now seeing this fungus-ridden pistil, I wonder if the closed flower evolved first not to entice bumble bees to pry their way in but instead as protection from rain. I can think of a handful of late fall and winter flowering plants like Edgeworthia chrysantha with its downward facing flowers or Claytonia virginica that open when the sun is shining that have adaptations that protect the pollen from rain. While it’s just a hypothesis, it would be easy to test. One could have a group of plants where the flowers are forced open and allowed to get wet versus a control that remain closed, and then do seed counts on both groups. But, I digress.
One flower I found had the top eaten off, so I inspected the flat seed before blowing them to the wind.
We walked further down the stream seeing more and more harvestbells. There were stream-side flowers, nibbled on flowers, backlit flowers, and plants with robust flowers.
Once pollinated, the flowers fade from blue to purple or a pinkish-purple.
We are not the only organisms that like gentians. A few of these flowers have been eaten on.
When the sun perfectly pierced through the pines, the harvestbells would be backlit and glow like Christmas lights.
One of the heaviest flowering Gentiana saponaria individuals that we saw.
Gentians weren’t the only notable flora we saw. On our way out, we saw a trio of Liatris with their fluffy seed. Liatris pycnostachya was so plentiful. There were thousands of stems standing stolidly in the dappled shade. I noted here in the wild they were much less floppy than I am use to seeing in garden culture. While much more muted now in seed, I would have loved to see this sea of purple in bloom this past summer.
We also saw Liatris tenuis with its more spindly seed heads. And, to my great delight I saw Liatris squarrosa for the first time. The feathery pappus made the seedheads almost the size of dandelions puff balls and created a great architectural essence along the trail back to the car.
The vertical lines of Liatris pycnostachya rise from the forest floor.
My jaw dropped upon seeing the size of these Liatris squarrosa seed heads. They were somewhere between a quarter and half dollar size.
We left having seen so many harvestbells, probably almost 100 at this one site. I love visiting places like these where they occur because you get such a better feel of what conditions the plant needs to live.
Back home I discovered that my plant was going to seed. It was an early Christmas present, and once they germinate after three months of chilling will keep giving the gift of delight for many years to come.
Interested in joining the Native Plant Society of Texas? Click here.